Chapter 57

57

SYLAS

Garrett's Past

June 12 th , Midnight

My phone rang with its special alert—someone was driving up to the cabin. I opened my phone, hopped onto the cameras, and rolled the feed back, spotting Mina's stupid little Fiat cruising up the logging trail.

Who? Trent demanded in a group text.

Guess? I texted back, before leaping out of my bed and pulling on my pants.

I heard a thump from the room above—Braden, waking up and reading the convo. Nolan lived off campus, but we'd pick him up on the drive.

Who's up for revenge? Logan said .

Fuckin' A, Nolan chimed in.

Five minutes later we were all out the door, piled into the cab of Logan's truck, and soon squeezed in tight by the addition of Nolan, as we talked over one another.

"Why'd you have to date such a cunt, Trent?" Braden asked, and Trent growled at him.

"Do you know how hard it is to find virgins these days? And—I didn't see any of your asses volunteering to date her, or her friend, so fuck all of you. Six fucking months of my life wasted, that I'll never get back."

"At least Mina put out," Logan said. "A lot. A-lot-a-lot. Can you imagine in the olden days? Having to keep your dicks out of the girls, for reals?"

Nolan rolled down the truck window to spit out of it, making Logan bark a complaint.

"Do not get that shit on my paint, man!"

"Yeah, but in the olden days, it would've been easy as shit to get a girl up here. No phones, no internet, no Me Too," Braden said.

"That's what my dad said," I said. I'd asked him for the story again and again. I didn't pretend to understand the magic that we were all in service to; all I knew was that I believed. So did my dad, my dad's dad, and his dad before that. All we had to do was a little ceremony every few years, and make sure that anyone who got one of our tattoos always gave them back.

Logan hauled his truck around a turn, slamming us all into one another, and my phone buzzed as we triggered the same camera that Mina had. "She still up here?" Trent asked.

"Yeah. Get off me," I said, shoving Nolan back.

"Why? Scared you might actually get some?" the much bigger man teased .

"Fuck you," I muttered, as Logan parked the truck.

"Spread out, she's somewhere nearby," Trent hissed.

"Did she trigger any other cameras?" Braden asked.

"Not—" I began, but then my phone buzzed. "Far side of the cabin," I said, scrolling quickly through the screen. "On the trail into the woods."

Nolan laughed and started running in that direction. Trent was after him in a second, and I knew I needed to keep up for appearance's sake.

While it wasn't my fault personally that things'd fallen through with the blonde, my entire family knew I'd been part of the group that failed to keep the bargain for our line. We'd almost finished the entire ceremony before we were interrupted—which was the only reason it hadn't blown back in our faces—but Mina's arrival had fucked everything up. It was too late for her virgin friend, but because she was still alive, we didn't get the same amount of juice out of her that other cohorts had from their sacrifices. She was still tied to us, but we'd missed the window to make the full offering—the ceremony demanded perfection, and without it, the power we drew from the ritual was weakened.

In fact, we were lucky we'd gotten any powers at all—hopefully the next cohort's sacrifice would go better. Because without the full force of the ceremony, we were living on borrowed time. The powers we had now were just a fraction of what we should've gained—temporary, unstable, like a spark instead of a flame. If the next cohort's sacrifice didn't go perfectly, we risked losing everything we'd worked for, everything our families had sacrificed for generations. The ability to sway others, win money, make women want us who were far out of our league. I didn't even want women—but the rest of it? Fuck, yeah .

I heard a howl from ahead, then another, and I knew that they were on her trail and were just messing with her now. We'd all been taking vacations up here since we were toddlers—she'd never had a chance.

Braden ran back to get me. "You're doing this," he said, as I heard Mina shriek.

"What?"

"Look, I'm your friend, and I'm telling you, this is happening. Otherwise—you want us to sacrifice you? Because we could—everyone knows you're a virgin."

"We're not sacrificing her!" I sputtered.

"Yeah, this is just about getting even—but you've gotta get in there, champ. You have a legacy to protect. Go make your dad proud."

"Which is exactly what I want to be thinking about when?—"

Braden grabbed my shoulders and shook me. "No one here is gonna suck your dick for you. Get hard and get in and prove you're a man."

"Fuck you, Braden," I cursed. But I still ran forward, grabbing my dick with my hand.

"Sylas?"

I heard Mina's voice from far, far away.

"Baby?"

I was exerting a great force on...myself, apparently, at this point, holding a man's shattered head in my hands. Pieces of splintered skull were poking out between my fingers and a low ebb of blood was pulsing out of a hole in his neck.

"I'm pretty sure he's dead, baby. Are you . . . okay?"

Her voice was small—not because of distance, but because she was falling into herself, and away from me, afraid of whatever it was that I'd learned.

"I am," I said. My smoke was still obscuring the space between us. "In a manner of speaking, I did feed him his ears." They were at the top of his throat now, at least. And if you counted having shoved and compacted most of his organs into the vicinity of his stomach, while I'd been wreaking havoc on him, he'd eaten his penis, upper thighs, and lower ribcage, too.

"I'm glad, baby, but can you come back out? I want to see you."

I disappeared everything to do with the man, after harvesting his mark from him, and putting it with the others.

"I have returned," I said, making myself as solid as possible, pulling back all my smoke to reveal her standing there, holding something in a frame with a worried expression. "Were you scared?" I asked, and she nodded. "I did read his mind, Mina. And somehow now I love you even more, which I did not think was possible," I promised, sinking to be precisely on her level. One beautiful tear quaked on the outer corner of her eye, and I reached out to draw a line down its most probable path with a claw tip. "May I?"

Mina nodded, and I leaned in to kiss it, pulling it into my mouth, far sweeter and more valuable than all the rest of the death and fear I had just eaten, because it had come from her. She sighed and fell into me, where I caught her, running my face into her hair, and we stayed that way for a long moment, me holding her, until I was certain she could stand on her own.

"What do I taste like?" she asked .

Like someone worth keeping alive.

"Perfection," I said.

The corners of her lips pulled up slowly. "And what'd you find out?"

"That your classmates were the same assholes you knew them to be. But we need to get into that cellar where they were performing their rites." I stroked a lock of hair out of her face.

"I found this," she said, holding the frame she held up. There were two men shaking hands in it, and I recognized one of them.

"That's—" I began.

"Royce Bannerman's great-granddad. I know. I recognized him from my research."

"And who is the other man?"

"I was hoping you'd be able to tell me."

I took a moment to close my eyes and sift through the last of Garrett's impermanent ingested memory. "He's related to the boy we just killed."

"I kind of figured," she said, staring into the photo again, before looking at me. "I'd rather talk to Royce again than visit the cellar."

I considered the man in the photo, the first man to have trapped me—all I remembered of him was a sodden, bloody mess, one I couldn't ask any questions of.

"I think I would, too." I could see police on the monitors over her shoulder, swarming the elderly woman's corpse like ants. "My queen," I said, offering her my hand, and creating a portal back to the Monster Security Agency.

She hesitated, looking around the room quickly. "Can you make sure no one else ever finds all this?"

"Absolutely," I said, before setting the place on fire behind me.

I brought us into the reception room where we'd first met, which felt like a lifetime ago. It was currently empty, but then the door swung open as Royce arrived, with a possible client of some sort following, an angry looking man in a suit.

"Excuse me"—he turned to tell them with a smile—"I'll be meeting you in the next room over. Give me a second?" I heard him say, before he burst back into the room with us to hiss, "What the fuck? You are not killing her here. Not inside the building!" he growled, like I was a bad dog.

"Cancel your other meeting. We need to talk."

Royce looked up at the ceiling. "Security!" he shouted, up to someone else.

I moved myself to block Mina. I'd seen most of Royce's other agents through my hourglass, and while many of them were dangerous...they weren't me.

"I can't believe I'm going to say this, Royce—but I would prefer not to hurt people."

Royce's head snapped back. "What is that, some kind of shitty joke?"

And then Mina stepped in front of me, because of course she would. "Don't hurt him!" she shouted.

"My queen," I said with a dark laugh. "Your lack of confidence pains me. "

"I'm sorry," she whispered, with a snort. "I couldn't help myself! I love you too much!"

Half a second later, a girl with blonde hair that streamed down to her waist in perfect waves ran in—although oddly, pieces of her eyes and jawline looked like Royce. And behind her was Royce's Arachnaea agent, who first climbed up the wall outside and entered the room sideways, tilting forward so his human half could angle in the door.

"You're not security!" Royce shouted at the girl.

"Dad," she groaned, crossing her arms. "Being a receptionist is so boring. "

"It's supposed to be!" he shouted, while the spider-human neared.

"Did you need assistance?" he asked, with a mechanical voice. I realized it was coming from a translation device by his ear.

"I'm not attacking anyone," I said. "And neither is she," I went on, winding a portion of myself around Mina. "We just need to talk to him," I said, pointing to Royce—while Mina offered out the picture she'd stolen from the cruel boy's hidden room.

Royce's eyes darted down in anger, but then his expression became solemn. "How did you get that?" he asked, snatching it from Mina's hands.

"It's a long story—but that's your great-grandfather, right?"

The blonde girl grinned from ear to ear. "Oh, this is family stuff, I'm staying for sure," she said, dropping into the nearest seat.